Boerum Hill is a small neighborhood in the northwestern portion of the New York City borough of Brooklyn that occupies 36 blocks bounded by State Street to the north, 4th Avenue to the east, Court Street to the west, and Warren Street to the south. There are commercial strips along Smith Street and Atlantic Avenue. The neighborhood is part of Brooklyn Community District 2, served by Brooklyn Community Board 2. The Brooklyn High School of the Arts is also located in the neighborhood on Dean Street and 3 Avenue. The neighborhood is served by the NYPD’s 84th Precinct.
HISTORY
Boerum Hill is named for the colonial farm of the Boerum family that occupied most of the area. Most of the housing consists of three-story row houses built between 1840 and 1870. The population is middle and upper middle class. This neighborhood was featured in two of Jonathan Lethem’s books: The Fortress of Solitude, set primarily on one block in Boerum Hill (Dean Street between Nevins Street and Bond Street), and Motherless Brooklyn, which is centered on Bergen Street, between Smith Street and Hoyt Street. In The Fortress Of Solitude, it is postulated that the neighborhood was named in the wake of gentrification. It is unclear whether this is true; for instance, one profile in The Village Voice confirms it, while the same column rewritten two years later disputes the attribution. The neighborhood is also the setting of Spike Lee’s 1995 movie, Clockers, which was filmed in the Gowanus Houses.
In the 1950s, all the neighborhoods south of Atlantic Avenue and west of Hoyt Street were called South Brooklyn, which derived its name from being south of the original town of Brooklyn (now Brooklyn Heights) which had been settled by the Dutch. In the 1950s and ’60s, the north end of Smith Street was the center of New York City’s Mohawk community.
Boerum Hill contains the Brooklyn House of Detention at Boerum Place (Adams Street) and Atlantic Avenue, converted industrial spaces, and NYCHA-run housing (Wyckoff Gardens and the Gowanus Houses).
